Thank God for Atheist Buses...

This week the Des Moines Area TransitAuthority(DART) suspended a bus driver because she wouldn't drive a bus sporting an advertisement for the Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers because it went against her Christian faith. DART's policy is that drivers cannot refuse to drive a working bus as it interferes with the ability to keep buses moving on time. The ACLU believes that this policy helps uphold the right to free speech that advertisers have when they post advertisements on the sides of DART's buses. I found it interesting that the ACLU compares this situation to one where an employee refuses to work with someone of a different faith. You cannot refuse to work with a coworker because they are of a different faith, and in this situation, that bus is our coworker. And bus drivers have to work with buses, even if that bus is an atheist.

Now, I would like to step back and take moment to ponder how ridiculous it was for this bus driver to refuse to drive this bus.

First, let's get the obvious things out of the way:

• Her job is to drive the bus. Not to critique it's exterior decor.

Ok, now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's move on to more interesting things:

• Whether or not she agrees with the advertisement on the outside of the bus she is driving is totally irrelevent and should not affect her job, which, again, is to drive the bus. This reminds me of instances where pharmacist refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control because it goes again their faith. They seem to forget that their job is to fill prescriptions, not make moral judgments about which drugs should be allowed to be prescribed according to their religious dogma.
• Everyone faces things they disagree with everyday. Thanks to the First Amendment we are constantly bombarded with things we may dislike, or even fiercely disagree with. But you know what, that's the way the United States works. In order to have the right to speak our minds we also have to be subjected to what everyone else thinks, too, even if we consider it blasphemy or just plain ridiculous. After all I believe that fast food is disgusting and that everything on Fox News is total crap, but that's not going to stop me from getting on a bus that's telling me that Big Macs are delicious and that Fox News is "Fair and Balanced." I would even get on it if it were telling me that Jesus loves me. I might think all those beliefs are ridiculous, but I respect someone else's right to yell them from the side of a bus, or a billboard, television, or whatever other medium they can get access to. But in return, I expect my fine fellow citizens to respect the things that I agree with, even if they don't like it.

Hang in there Atheist Buses! The First Amendment is on your side!